Agenda - October 28

Sometimes it feels like there is more disparity between CTOs and CTO roles than commonality. This CTO is focused internally, that one externally. That one insists that staying hands-on-keyboard technical has been essential to their success, whereas this one hasn’t touched code directly in years but still does well. If you aspire to being a CTO one day (or becoming a better one now!) this can be frustrating and confusing.

In this talk, experienced CTO Meri Williams will help you explore the different flavours of competencies & capabilities for CTOs, how to develop in each, and how to mix & match. You’ll leave better equipped to define your own professional development plan, and judge opportunities as they arise in terms of whether they will broaden or specialise you as a leader in technology.

A global pandemic, fluctuating economic market, sudden changes to social policies. Historical moments like these used to happen once every few years, if not once a decade. In the past two years alone, we’ve been through a lot. Coupled with regular change that may happen to a business, like staffing challenges, layoffs, acquisitions, pivots in strategy, the workforce today is left grappling with how to manage lots of change in both their personal lives and at work. What’s more, many employees are now working remotely, they’re feeling more isolated and overwhelmed at work than ever before.

Change is inevitable – and it's important in pushing companies and people forward. Managers have a responsibility to lead their teams through all kinds of change, but it’s now more important than ever that they do so with a human approach. The best managers will be able to prepare teams for moments of uncertainty–from world events to internal organizational changes–and help them transition from panic and resistance to understanding and commitment.

In this session, Rukmini Reddy, SVP of Engineering at Slack, will share her perspective on why change is a must and the positive impacts that can come with it when you can gain buy-in and trust from the people on your team behind the change. She will walk through change objectives and best practices for communicating change, and how managers can be positive change agents for their organizations by approaching change management through a human lens.

Learn how to create positive change in your work environment and gain buy-in from people in power, your direct reports, and cross-functional leaders. Bring an area where you wish you had more influence; Lara Hogan will walk you through a step-by-step process to identify stakeholders, develop winnable experiments, and kickstart the change you want to see.

What is important to you? What is important to your people? What is important to your company? What is your organizational direction? All of these influence the workplace culture and how you build your story.
 

Culture has become a big expression as part of each of our organizations and it encompasses a lot of things. No culture is the same. Every leader brings their own experiences and microinequities to their culture.

Studies have shown that having a distinct culture is important to a business' success. And having a clear business strategy helps to create a positive culture.

Simply stated, a positive culture is all about aligning values, belief systems, attitudes, and assumptions. This talk will outline what are the essential facets of building your culture and how you ensure diversity, equity, and belonging go hand and hand.

Throughout your tech career you have used code as a tool to help your companies realize business value without truly understanding the company’s business. Understanding your company’s business can help you to apply your technical skills to deliver the best solutions and products that are aligned to business goals.
This talk will focus on strategies and skills that can help you develop business understanding including key concepts related to finance and product strategy. Learning these skills will allowyou to build better partnerships, products and solutions that are aligned with business goals.

They say it takes a village to raise a child and as you look at how you got here, chances are, there was a whole village behind you. It has many names, your village, your Voltron, your pit crew, or your network. Building the right network allows you to bring meaning to your work, problem-solve with a wide range of expertise, and progress in your career faster. In this talk, we’ll talk about discovering the gaps in your network to fill, planning backwards from a big goal, and building networking into your schedule’s cadence.

A strong, well-communicated technical strategy can empower your leaders and teams, help increase velocity and set a stage for quality. A resilient, forward-looking strategy can act as a North Star, guiding your organization in times of change. But how can we tap into these superpowers? How can we build a resilient technical strategy? And if there are superpowers, is there also strategy Kryotonite? We'll discuss these topics and more, while walking through examples where strong tech strategy gave teams the power to leap tall OKRs in a single bound.

Keeping current is one of the biggest challenges of the role. As engineering leaders, you often worry about losing your technical sensibilities and you also want to maintain credibility in areas that they’re the most knowledgeable about. But in order to make informed decisions, you need to develop an array of other skills while staying current. So, how do you overcome the challenges of staying technical while being a manager? And most importantly how do you carve out time to learn?

This talk will dive into strategies you can use for staying technical while being a leader of the organization and as well give you tools to identify the areas that you need to be up to date on and what can you manage without knowledge.

We’re all aware that the health of any organisation depends to a very large degree on the health of the leadership, but we give surprisingly little thought to how we can foster healthy leadership teams. Without that cohesion, an organisation’s growth can slow and ultimately fail to deliver on its goals.

As leaders, we tend to focus solely on the teams we support – ensuring their success, accountability, and career growth. But when we don’t pour that same level of rigour into building healthy leadership teams, we’re laying the grounds for an unstable organisation.

The foundations of a high performing leadership team are built on strong relationships that are rooted in mutual trust and common goals. In this talk, we’ll discuss practical ways to create a cohesive and supportive peer group that role models the behaviours you want to foster in your organisation.

Growing as an engineering leader was very challenging to me. The more senior I became, the more difficult it was to find the mentorship I needed to remain effective. In this talk I will share tactics on getting constructive feedback from peers, learning from new mentors and the strategies we can use to keep growing our skills and expertise as engineering leaders.

The shift from manager to leader isn't a step forward, it's a leap. As an engineering leader, you need to scale your impact: broadening the scope of your vision and honing your efforts on actions that will provide the greatest results. 

Your peers change, your focus shifts from team to the larger organization, and you take on more of your own career development. To have true impact as a senior leader, you’ll need to scale yourself, shift your management style, navigate organizational friction, and develop productive feedback loops.

In this full-day workshop, we’ll focus on:

• Understanding your value and success criteria as a senior engineering leader
• The skills you need to have impact and enact change
• The difference between managing ICs and managing managers 
• How to build strong relationships with your reports, cross-functional team, and wider org
• Tools for navigating organizational friction as a leader
• How to create feedback loops to get productive feedback for self-improvement. 

During the day, you’ll participate in interactive exercises that will allow you to convert the day’s learnings into practical actions. You’ll leave the day with new knowledge, resources, suggestions for self-improvement, and the ability to start implementing your learnings immediately in your role.